Thursday, September 12, 2013

Have you ever found yourself perusing Goodreads and noticed a friend reading a book or marking a book "to be read" that you've already read, seen your rating off to the side of their status update, and thought to yourself, "I rated that book how many stars?" I've found myself doing this a lot. My tastes have changed so much over the last few years...and apparently, I had some pretty questionable taste to begin with. That, or I just hadn't been exposed to much in the way of young adult novels at that point. Either is probably true.

Back in the day, I think I pretty much loved everything I read. Pretty. Much. Everything. Now is not so different, but that's because I have a better sense of what I do like and can make better decisions about which books I actually spend my precious time reading. I wish I could read all of those books again (or not) and re-rate them as the more experienced reader I am today. And thus, Project Falling Stars was born.

Obviously, with a TBR the size of mine, re-reading every book is pretty much impossible if I want to read anything new in the near future, but I still want to spend a little time on my "read" shelf on Goodreads reevaluating my star ratings. For a lot of the books I'm referring to, I didn't even write proper reviews because I didn't consider myself a reviewer at the time. I was still just your average reader, desperate for my next book.

I want to start this project, but I've got some moral dilemmas to confront first. Does changing my star ratings on Goodreads -- I won't change anything on my blog...that just seems counterintuitive at this point -- seem like cheating? Does it seem unfair to the book, since at one point, I must have enjoyed it enough to give it that particular rating? And does it seem snarky to only be downgrading ratings? Or should I just do what pleases me since it is my Goodreads account.

I would only change ratings on books that I was absolutely certain I wouldn't like as much upon another reading. And I'm not talking about dropping from five stars to a measly one star. But if you check my "read" shelf from back when I first joined Goodreads, you'd find a ton of five star ratings, and I can guarantee that most of those books wouldn't hold up to that rating, should I find the time to venture into their worlds again.

Decisions, decisions. And it's not like I don't already have enough lined up with the blog to keep me busy for the next few months. But it bothers me to no end to see some of my older ratings, especially when they're for earlier books in a series that I've already decided not to finish. I should just do it, right?

What are your thoughts? Do you ever re-rate books on Goodreads, just for the fun of it? Or do you think it's only fair to change a rating after re-reading a book?

12 comments:

I agree with Roro. I'll change my older ratings sometimes, but only after a reread. I did that recently, actually! This time, I rated it higher than I had originally. I'm sure that's the exception, but it's still cool. I say do whatever you want to do. It's your account, you're rules. :)

I'm always rearranging my Goodreads account! ;) I like it to be organised...and true to what I think. I'm kind of the opposite, though, and rated a lot of books really low, when I'd now rate them higher. I wish I had time to reread! That'd be awesome. Ah, but *sigh*, there's totally not enough time. I think you should do what you want with your Goodreads account. I think a reread isn't always 100% necessary.

I haven't so much since I started blogging, but before on Goodreads I would occasionally adjust stars and I think it's normal because not only do tastes change, but you compare all the books to each other. So if I saw a couple 4 star books and remember liking one more than the other, I'd adjust. I don't think you need to re-read unless you really wanted to.

I think that there is nothing wrong with altering your own account. It would be great if Goodreads added a section so that you could show original ratings and altered ratings with the date of the alteration and a section for a brief comment as to why you altered it... however, since I don't see that happening anytime soon, go with your instinct and adjust your ratings if they are no longer how you feel.

I feel that many people tend to give books much higher ratings when first using Goodreads, for a variety of reasons; as suggested above, we hadn't read as many books within the genre and therefore had fewer books to compare to, our tastes change over time, we become more confident in giving a less than perfect rating - or a rating that goes against the popular opinion, etc.

I have this exact dilema in my life except many that I want to rerate I have not reviewed. So yes the question is... should i change or not. I also have mixed feelings. I mean at the time I thought I loved the book if I rated it a 5. I just hadnt read as many good books to full acess the rating. In this case I think its ok to change the rating if you are using the comparitive scale to those you love now. Most of mine have so many ratings on Goodreads since they were really popular books, I don't think my rating would make much of a difference.

It is a tough decision to make but I think you should do what you feel is right. Its your account and you are still being honest so rerate if you like.

I sometimes also want to re-evaluate some of my ratings, but I haven't so far. Part of that is because I sometimes didn't rate the book based on how much I liked it but rather on how well I thought it was written. That's not always the same thing for me - I can admit that a book reads fluidly or has good characters, but it's just not for me. For instance, I rated Beautiful Disaster 3 stars because it was so hard to put down and the writing pulled me in, even though I didn't like Travis and Abby's relationship at all. I would now give it no more than 2 stars. But I think I'd only downgrade the book after a re-read, and I'm not gonna do that to myself. On the other hand, it's your shelf and you should handle it the way you want. Maybe there are books you'd rate higher if you went back to them as well. That's happened to me too, because I understood things I didn't the first time around.It's a really complicated issue though :/

I want to do this too! I actually made a blog post talking about it. I guess great minds think alike ;D if you want to see it, here's the link: http://boricuanbookworms.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/im-on-a-mission-i-wanna-review-them-all/

I have totally looked at ratings and thought "what was I thinking". I never even thought about re-rating, but I say go for it. I'd do it, but that seems like way too much work. If I had the time, I'd probably do some on my blog like update old formats, or even better, install the Book Blogger Plugin and fill out all the fields so my indexes were automatic.

Well, first, I think it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to change your ratings. If you know that a certain rating is way higher than what you think it should be now, then I say go ahead! I mean, tastes change. It's not unfair to change it. I see it in the way of this: if you reread a book and decide to do a reread post or something, a post where you talk about books you read before and now you reread it, you wouldn't leave that 5 star rating in this present post. You would give it another rating because you feel differently about it. I think leaving a rating you don't feel is more dishonorable than changing it (not to say that leaving a rating is bad because I don't think I have the patience to go through past books;) Hopefully that made sense.

Secondly, I try to avoid ratings anyways because there's so many factors involved, it gives me stress. I try on GR and usually end up giving books 3 stars since it seems safe ;)

I actually re-rate a couple of books not so long ago. I felt like it wasn't fair to other books, so I adjusted it. It's not like someone is going to notice the difference, so if you feel better by changing it, you should do it! :)